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Saturday, December 31, 2011

When
you install most applications you’ll get a prompt for a custom or full
install. It seems so easy to just click full and let the installer go to
work–but you’re asking for a slower computer, a load of toolbars, and
crapware if you do.
Over at 7Tutorials they decided to see just what would happen if you
downloaded popular software applications and let the installer go to
town with the “full” option. What they found is that letting an
installation app have free run of your machine is a great way to turf
your computer’s performance. How big of a performance hit can you
expect? Here’s one of the many downsides of letting installation
software make changes unchecked:

39% (13 out of 33) of installed applications set
themselves to run at the Windows startup even though, in most cases, the
functionality being offered is not required by the user at each Windows
startup. The only exceptions to this rule are security software or
drive emulators.
The end result is longer boot timings and added user annoyance with
each login. All the applications added a total of 46 seconds to my
system’s initial 52 seconds boot timing. To put things in perspective,
this makes for boot procedure slower by 88% compared to
the initial timings on my clean computer. To contribute to my
annoyance, at each startup I was also welcomed by a huge number of open
windows (all requesting something from me), unwanted desktop gadgets and
lots of desktop shortcuts.

Hit up the link below for a full tour of the 33 apps they installed
and the break down of which apps installed toolbars, startup entries,
and otherwise slowed down the machine.